Roma Routes

Romania

Romania – Summer Camp August 2010
The Romanian partner held a Summer camp as part of the Roma Routes project to promote intercultural dialogue between 30 young people, 15 Roma and 15 non-Roma, and to address discrimination and negative stereotyping. The project aimed to find ways to identify elements of Roma cultural heritage and to establish how they can be a medium for dialogue between Roma and non-Roma. Most of the participants were able to experience activities new to them. Activities included classes in English, computing and history; visits to museums, an art gallery, the local planetarium and cultural sightseeing to local traditional wooden churches; sports, games and films; participants were given a project T shirt. The camp led to better understanding between each community and by the end the children were working and playing together.

Romania – Cultural Research Maramures County

Romanian family invloved in cultural research

The Tourism Office for Maremures wanted to better understand their local Roma population and the transition between traditional and contemporary influences.

The research team consisted of a project manager, a sociologist from the Institute of Innovation and Research Development Bucharest and 4 operators for the interviews (one for each established route).

The Roma ethnic group in Maramures have lost a great many customs, traditions and culture of their Roma ethnicity whilst assimilating a number of elements of cultural traditions and customs characteristic of the non-Roma population with whom they live together. However, a number of factors specific to their Roma culture, traditions and civilization have remained unchanged for centuries. This study is the first research focused exclusively on cultural and socio-economic analysis of Roma people in Maramures county.

Results summary and conclusions:

traditional jobs have disappeared in Maramures.

music groups are now influenced by modern music

only 22% of Roma know about the media that is written for/by them

in order to integrate the Roma need media in their own languages – at the moment they don’t and

many Roma don’t have TVs

the Roma community have started to become part of the Romanian population by denying some of their traditions

some of their oral stories and traditions have gone

The general policy towards Roma in Romania sidelines the community. The study will be presented to the officer in charge in Maramures to see what positive changes can be made to help the community.